The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

A gripping history of banking and the booms and busts that shaped the world on both sides of the Atlantic, The House of Morgan traces the trajectory of the J. P.Morgan empire from its obscure beginnings in Victorian London to the crash of 1987. Ron Chernow paints a fascinating portrait of the private saga of the Morgans and the rarefied world of the American and British elite in which they moved. Based on extensive interviews and access to the family and business archives, The House of Morgan is an investigative masterpiece.

God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican

From a master chronicler of legal and financial misconduct, a magnificent investigation nine years in the making, this book traces the political intrigue and inner workings of the Catholic Church. Decidedly not about faith, belief in God, or religious doctrine, this audiobook is about the church's accumulation of wealth and its byzantine entanglements with financial markets across the world.

On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System

From the man who was in the very middle of this perfect economic storm, On the Brink is Paulson's fast-paced retelling of the key decisions that had to be made with lightning speed. Paulson puts the listener in the room for all the intense moments as he addressed urgent market conditions, weighed critical decisions, and debated policy and economic considerations with of all the notable players.

The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why Pure Capitalism Is the World Economy’s Only Hope

Did Wall Street cause the mess we are in? Should Washington place stronger regulations on the financial industry? Can we lower unemployment rates by controlling the free market? Answer: no. Not only is free-market capitalism good for the economy, it is our only hope for recovery. As the nation’s longest-serving CEO of one of the top 25 financial institutions, John Allison has had a unique inside view of the events leading up to the financial crisis.

The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business

A behind-the-scenes, revelatory history of McKinsey & Company, America's most influential and controversial business consulting firm, told by one of the nation's leading financial journalists. In The Firm, Duff McDonald uncovers how these high-powered, high-priced business savants have ushered in waves of structural, financial, and technological shifts. With unrivaled access to company documents and current and former employees, McDonald reveals the inner workings of what just might be the most influential private organization in America.

Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises

On January 26, 2009, during the depth of the financial crisis and having just completed five years as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Timothy F. Geithner was sworn in by President Barack Obama as the 75th Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. Now, in a strikingly candid, riveting, and historically illuminating memoir, Geithner takes listeners behind the scenes during the darkest moments of the crisis.

The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World

Russell Gold, a brilliant and dogged investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal, has spent more than a decade reporting on one of the biggest stories of our time: the spectacular, world-changing rise of "fracking". Recognized as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a recipient of the Gerald Loeb Award for his work, Gold has traveled along the pipelines and into the hubs of this country’s energy infrastructure; he has visited frack sites from Texas to North Dakota; and he has conducted thousands of interviews with engineers and wildcatters, CEOs and roughnecks, environmentalists and politicians.

The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson

This is the story of the rise to national power of a desperately poor young man from the Texas Hill Country. The Path to Power reveals in extraordinary detail the genesis of the almost superhuman drive, energy, and ambition that set LBJ apart. It follows him from the Hill Country to New Deal Washington, from his boyhood through the years of the Depression to his debut as Congressman, his heartbreaking defeat in his first race for the Senate, and his attainment, nonetheless, at age 31, of the national power for which he hungered.

Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor

Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway's visionary vice chairman and Warren Buffett's indispensable financial partner, has outperformed market indexes again and again, and he believes any investor can do the same. His notion of "elementary, worldly wisdom" - a set of interdisciplinary mental models involving economics, business, psychology, ethics, and management - allows him to keep his emotions out of his investments and avoid the common pitfalls of bad judgment.

Alibaba's World: How a Remarkable Chinese Company Is Changing the Face of Global Business

In September 2014, a Chinese company that most Americans had never heard of held the largest IPO in history - bigger than Google, Facebook, and Twitter combined. Alibaba, now the world's largest ecommerce company, mostly escaped Western notice for over 10 years, while building a customer base larger than Amazon's and handling the bulk of ecommerce transactions in China. How did it happen? And what was it like to be along for such a revolutionary ride?

The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable

After the economic meltdown of 2008, Warren Buffett famously warned, "beware of geeks bearing formulas." But as James Weatherall demonstrates, not all geeks are created equal. While many of the mathematicians and software engineers on Wall Street failed when their abstractions turned ugly in practice, a special breed of physicists has a much deeper history of revolutionizing finance.

Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years

Originally published in six volumes, which sold more than one million copies, Carl Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln was praised as the most noteworthy historical biography of Sandburg’s generation. He later distilled this monumental work into one volume that critics and readers alike consider his greatest work of nonfiction, as well as the most distinguished, authoritative biography of Lincoln ever published.

Growing up in an Illinois prairie town, Sandburg listened to stories of old-timers who had known Lincoln. By the time this single-volume edition was competed, he had spent a lifetime studying, researching, and writing about our 16th president.

Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped

The ascension of Vladimir Putin - a former lieutenant colonel of the KGB - to the presidency of Russia in 1999 should have been a signal that the country was headed away from democracy. Yet in the intervening years - as America and the world's other leading powers have continued to appease him - Putin has grown into not only a dictator but a global threat. With his vast resources and nuclear weapons, Putin is at the center of a worldwide assault on political liberty.

The Untold History of the United States

Aided by the latest archival findings and recently declassified documents and building on the research of the world’s best scholars, Stone and Kuznick construct an often shocking but meticulously documented "people’s history" of the American empire that challenges the notion of American exceptionalism. Stone and Kuznick will introduce listeners to a pantheon of heroes and villains as they show not only how far the United States has drifted from its democratic traditions but the powerful forces that have struggled to get us back on track.

Wealth, Poverty, and Politics: An International Perspective

In Wealth, Poverty, and Politics, Thomas Sowell, one of the foremost conservative public intellectuals in the country, argues that political and ideological struggles have led to dangerous confusion about income inequality in America. Pundits and politically motivated economists trumpet ambiguous statistics and sensational theories while ignoring the true determinant of income inequality: the production of wealth.

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution

Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today’s developing countries—with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

Everyone would benefit from seeing further into the future, whether buying stocks, crafting policy, launching a new product, or simply planning the week's meals. Unfortunately, people tend to be terrible forecasters. As Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed in a landmark 2005 study, even experts' predictions are only slightly better than chance. However, an important and underreported conclusion of that study was that some experts do have real foresight.

The Great Divide: The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson That Defined a Nation

History tends to cast the early years of America in a glow of camaraderie when there were, in fact, many conflicts between the Founding Fathers - none more important than the one between George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Their disagreement centered on the highest, most original public office created by the Constitutional Convention: the presidency. It also involved the nation's foreign policy, the role of merchants and farmers in a republic, and the durability of the union.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a magnificent treasury of the best short works of Richard P. Feynman, from interviews and speeches to lectures and printed articles. A sweeping, wide-ranging collection, it presents an intimate and fascinating view of a life in science - a life like no other. From his ruminations on science in our culture to his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, this book will delight anyone interested in the world of ideas.

To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949

The European catastrophe, the long continuous period from 1914 to1949, was unprecedented in human history - an extraordinarily dramatic, often traumatic, and endlessly fascinating period of upheaval and transformation.

The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945

This Pulitzer Prize-winning history of World War II chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of the Japanese empire, from the invasion of Manchuria and China to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Told from the Japanese perspective, The Rising Sun is, in the author’s words, "a factual saga of people caught up in the flood of the most overwhelming war of mankind, told as it happened - muddled, ennobling, disgraceful, frustrating, full of paradox."

One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com

Amazon’s business model is deceptively simple: make online shopping so easy and convenient that customers won’t think twice. It can almost be summed up by the button on every page: Buy now with one click. Why has Amazon been so successful? Much of it has to do with Jeff Bezos, the CEO and founder, whose business strategy and unique combination of character traits have driven Amazon to the top of the online retail world. Originally a computer nerd rather than a businessman, he had the vision to capitalize on the untapped online marketplace for bookselling....

The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan

In January of 1973 Richard Nixon announced the end of the Vietnam War and prepared for a triumphant second term - until televised Watergate hearings revealed his White House as little better than a mafia den. The next president declared upon Nixon’s resignation “our long national nightmare is over” - but then congressional investigators exposed the CIA for assassinating foreign leaders. The collapse of the South Vietnamese government rendered moot the sacrifice of some 58,000 American lives.

The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War

John Foster Dulles was secretary of state while his brother, Allen Dulles, was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In this book, Stephen Kinzer places their extraordinary lives against the backdrop ofAmerican culture and history. He uses the framework of biography to ask: Why does the United States behave as it does in the world?

Publisher's Summary

In 2006, Ben S. Bernanke was appointed chair of the Federal Reserve, capping a meteoric trajectory from a rural South Carolina childhood to professorships at Stanford and Princeton, to public service in Washington's halls of power. There would be no time to celebrate, however - the burst of the housing bubble in 2007 set off a domino effect that would bring the global financial system to the brink of meltdown. In The Courage to Act, Bernanke pulls back the curtain on his efforts to prevent a mass economic failure, working with two US presidents and using every Fed capability, no matter how arcane, to keep the US economy afloat. His experiences during the initial crisis and the Great Recession that followed give listeners an unequaled perspective on the American economy since 2006, and his narrative will reveal for the first time how the creativity and decisiveness of a few key leaders prevented an economic collapse of unimaginable scale.

Would you consider the audio edition of The Courage to Act to be better than the print version?

I have no way of comparing. This question needs to be dispensed with as I do not believe the overwhelming majority of audiobook partakers make it a habit to also read the print version of each audiobook. It makes no sense to me that they would do both.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

Interesting.

What does Grover Gardner bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

To me, the narrator seemed like the nearly ideal person to give voice to this entire book, with his uniformly even, dispassionate tone, considering what most people might regard as very dry material. I will even admit to nodding off a time or two. But I saw no way the narrator could have jazzed up his delivery of what mostly sounded like right out of a textbook, at least until near the end.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No, I don't feel an extreme reaction is possible. Not that the financial crisis itself was not an extreme thing, impacting gazillions of citizens in a horrible way. But in this book, we are in an academic world, a world of graphs and rules, of historical precedents and, it seemed, every type of consideration other than the real-world, intimate effects felt by the victims. This would be my main criticism of the work.

Not that the harm to the victims was skipped or its importance denied. It was all there, but it was given as numbers on charts. There was not a single personal story given of a victim's life being ruined by the irresponsible acts of others.

Another factor that was not elucidated in my opinion had to do with the criminality of the perpetrators of the crisis. Totally lacking was any blaming or emphasis on the right/wrong aspect. All the factors that actually coalesced to cause the collapse were listed as in a textbook, but in a setting of a financial environment, not human nor even very much political. The political aspect was lightly touched upon.

Even the situatiion with the robo-signers, which at the time quite shocked and alarmed me, was flatly explained in terms of numbers of documents, etc., and the amount of fines eventually paid. No outrage was evident on the part of the author.

The author did mention his "disappointment" over how it seemed the politicians were so willing and even eager to harm the economy without really even knowing what the end result would be, but I would have described the whole political situation in different, specific terms. This crisis was nothing if not death by a thousand cuts for millions of citizens.

All told, however, it appears the intent of this work was to be just a sort of day-by-day diary of one man's trek through the deep weeds of a near-death experience of the world's foremost economy, with all that emanates therefrom. I would have thought that experience would have been a lot more of an emotional one for the man sitting in at the top of the heap, taking the destruction all in.<b

Any additional comments?

Get this book if you are a person with education on finance. Its main interest would have to be to this group. There is precious little of an up-close-and-personal aspect included, although being the subject was the ruination of so many lives, I would have thought more should have been said about that. This book was written from the viewpoint of a master mechanic analyzing a terrible train wreck - all the big and little material things which played into the wreck, while almost meticulously barely mentioning the hundreds of people who were killed.

I've long liked Ben Bernanke's calm, to-the-point writing and speaking style. Only rarely does he use openly entertaining and florid prose, as in, "I felt like I was juggling hand grenades." He masterfully explains government, politics and events. He phrases stories with a diplomat's velvet glove: as the political theater is recounted, and the menagerie of odd grandstanding personalities marches through, his understated (yet crystal clear) accounts tell volumes about Washington people and dynamics. It is all the more hilarious for his never-flagging coolness and calm. His opinions and frustrations are sheathed and understated, but apparent. At both political extremes, Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders come in for some critiquing. This trait of coolness makes a fine and very educational (again, not romping) account of the events, hedged enough to support and not steamroll the thinking of an intelligent reader. These traits served him (and us) well in the eye of the storm. And I accept his position favoring preserving the Fed's independence, completely. I could not imagine the circus of Congress trying to micromanage things in the heat of a financial collapse. All that said, the critiques that the Fed, in the run-up to 2008, both under Greenspan and Bernanke, did too little too late to rein in the excesses of the time, still stands, in my mind. The memoirs of Paulson, Geithner, and Bernanke have not allayed these. I have a better appreciation after hearing this, of the facile quality of critiquing by hindsight, talk being cheap, and the limits of the view from the cockpit (so to speak) of an organization like this. Yet, out here on Main Street, one couldn't miss signs everywhere an economy lifting off into bubble-cuckoo-land in the 2000s. In the air (and on every block, through various trinkets of the times, and in every barbecue conversation) was that "We're all gonna be rich!" lunacy of 1999 and 1929. Yes, it's hard (and devilishly complex) to take away the punchbowl when the party is just getting going -- which points to the sort of calls we desperately need from these folks.

Clearly written account of how the Fed works, how it tried to meet the demands of the Financial Crisis of 2007-2009, and the special role it plays in government as an entity independent from direct political control. Bernanke's thoughtful and understated approach to banking and financial policy shows throughout the book, making this a very instructive and worthwhile read. If you listen carefully, you will learn much about the tools the Fed uses to manage the money supply and interest rates and the critical role the Fed plays in providing financial liquidity to the banking system when panics or major banking "runs" occur. He describes in detail the major role that financial "panic" played in seizing up the financial system once the financial players had belatedly recognized how shaky and bogus had been their reliance on subprime mortgage securities.

Bernanke had been in his academic life a close student of previous financial panics and crises, and had studied the approaches and mistakes made by central banks in dealing with those cases. That experience proved very valuable when he confronted the greatest US financial crisis since the Depression not long after he became Chairman of the Fed.

The only shortcoming I found in the book was a lack of detailed discussion as to how the banking regulators had missed the abuses and very dangerous speculation that was growing up in the subprime mortgage market. He cites the disjointed system of financial regulation as a reason why the Fed and other regulators seemed to lack a full picture of what was going on. That is of course not a basis for an "in the trenches" lessons-learned analysis of the build-up to the subprime crisis, and I would have welcomed a deeper dive into that aspect of the crisis.

The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath, by Ben S. Bernanke is a history of the causes of the 2007 through 2014 spiraling economic recession suffered by the United States and other advanced economies. The tale is a chronological record of just about all the significant events (as affecting our nation or its institutions) and for each such event includes an explanation of their causes, the then contemporary negotiations undertaken in the Fed, the Executive Office, Congress and with private enterprise responding to that monetary upheaval, and the outcome of those efforts for the overall recession and its lingering path. (Nothing herein is presuming we are over the recession.) This is not only a very good study, this is an enthralling story, very educational and (for a rather dry subject) very well read.

The book is a story told by Chairman Bernanke, who is self-congratulating and is self-admiring. No problem, it does not get in the way of the history and book’s enjoyment. In any case it tells of a fortuitous happenstance that Chairman Bernanke, who took his position as Federal Reserve Bank Chairman, just as the recession set in. He was well studied for the great recessionary tumult because as he explains he was a student of the causes and responses to the Great Depression of the 1930s. As he opens his History, Chairman Bernanke says himself:

“When the economic well-being of their nation demanded a strong and creative response, my colleagues at the Federal Reserve, policymakers and staff alike, mustered the moral courage to do what was necessary, often in the face of bitter criticism and condemnation. I am grateful to all of them.”

One might think the title is too self-aggrandizing, particularly as I have mentioned Chairman Bernanke was self-congratulatory. That is not the case, although I do think he (deservedly) praises himself much; as one can read from his opening quote, the courage he was speaking of was that of his fellow Fed Board and Open Market Committee members. The fact is given the nation’s fiscal failures and lukewarm responses to the crises by the Congress (also explained in the book) and if not for the Fed, its members, and their economic intelligence in managing the monetary policy of the nation, the fiscal managers alone would have failed. The fiscal managers because of political infighting and countervailing economic perspectives may not have responded so efficiently – in that they may not have thought out the antidotes to a recession to the extent Chairman Bernanke and the other Fed and Treasury Department members had - and we may have suffered more of a downturn. The right women and men, in the right place at the right time taking the correct actions. At least that is the import of the novel.

Bernanke, of course, was not only a teacher or professor of economics at Stanford and then Princeton but also the President’s Chairman of the White House’s Counsel of Economic Advisers, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Directors, and then finally, Chairman of the Federal Bank. A charmed life for a monetarist. The book is a perfect teaching curriculum for the subject.

The book tells us of the first inklings of economics stress developing in the mortgage backed securities markets in the French Banking system, and then the Bear Stearns dilemma comes into focus, the impending issues with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Lehman catastrophe, AIG and the bailouts of the GM and more. We are told not only that these intuitions had issues, but rather their histories, their importance to the system, what was the genesis of the economic failures, what was done to attempt to correct the corporate failings and protect our society and its ultimate results. The book then goes on to tell the tale of the politics of the era. No holds barred; the idiom so apt for wrestling but so metaphoric for the Great Recession.

The book is so good I have a new goal in life. I would like to teach this book as a study of that Great Recession in a college atmosphere. Needless to say it is a highly recommended reading for any student of politics, the economy or the Fed. Oh yes, and one could not have read it better than was done by Grover Gardner. As I said a dry subject made enthralling.

I enjoyed getting the inside view point and information about the recent financial crisis. Bernanke describes the struggle of policy makers at the Federal Reserve and Department of Treasury. Bernanke shows what it was like to develop a plan while the data is uncertain and the political environment is treacherous.

Bernanke tells of his early life growing up in a small town in South Carolina, and his academic studies of the Great Depression. Bernanke went on to be a Professor of Economics at Princeton University before he was chairman of the Federal Reserve. The author lays out the problem and how it came about; discussing the pros and cons of various solutions, then tells us how it was resolved. Bernanke made an important point that I have also heard from professional organization, businesses, and unions and so, it is that, many of the American workers are not trained/educated in the skills and professions we need today. We also have a shortage of teachers trained to teach in the needed skills. The author states this weakens the middle class and keeps more people in poverty; our economy works best at full employment.

It is frightening to realize how close we came to matching or exceeding the Great Depression again. The author also gives his perspectives about our economic future. Last year I read “Stress Test” by Timothy F. Geithner and “Too Big to Fail” by Andrew R. Sorkin; between the two books I think I have a better understanding of the “Great Recession” we are slowly making our way out of. The book is fairly long at about 23 hours. Grover Gardner did a good job narrating the book.

I like to know different points of views of the problems. This book clearly lays out Bernanke's position and thinking during the crisis. I have a bit of a hard time accepting his premise that he thought through this the way he delivers in the book. I have been involved in many crisis management situations, usually our stories of why we did what we did, are just that "stories" too many factors to consider in a logical way. Still the logic after the fact was interesting.